Samsung SGH-F210 Review

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At the top of the year I reviewed Samsung’s X830; a very slim, very small mobile which had an unusual take on keeping its number pad hidden. You rotated the top and bottom halves of the phone around a pivoting hinge at one end of the handset.

Now, at the tail end of the year, I get the tri-band F210, an updated, revamped version of the same handset. The F210 is available all over the place – online I found it at O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone, and all have it free on various contracts.

My review sample came from Orange, where the phone is available in pink and blue flavours. The obvious girl/boy comments apply.

I got the pink version. Riyad will no doubt do a sharp intake of breath when he reads that I rather like it. But then contrary to popular belief I’m not against all pink things, just the ‘Oh she’s a girl, let’s give her something pink’ approach.

Anyway, I’m not going to rant. The point is that this phone has a reddish hue to its pinkyness which makes it a little less girly than some.

Most of the pink parts, as well as a silver band on the back of the phone, are metal so they shine nicely. There is some plastic to the casing, notably a silver band between the upper and lower sections of the phone which contains the volume buttons and a button lock. When the handset is opened this forms the frame for the plastic (pinky-red) number pad buttons.

Just like the X830 this is an extremely small and light mobile. It weighs just 72g, and is 87.8mm tall, 31mm wide and 20.5mm thick. When opened it grows to about 150mm tall. Closed it looks like a portable music player. OK, it is nowhere near as thin as one of these, but since only the front screen and control wheel are visible, there’s no obvious trace that it’s actually a mobile phone.

Despite its small overall size when you open this mobile up – by twisting top and bottom sections around that hinge located under the centre of the navigation button, the internal keys are quite large. The X830 had an unusual button arrangement – each row contained only two keys. This made number dialling slow and texting a real pain.

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